What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Systems Engineer position at Transfinder?
Senior Systems Engineer
Pay Status and Classification: Exempt, Regular Full-time
Supervisor Title: Director of DevOps
Work Location: Remote in New York or Texas. If in New York and local to company headquarters in Schenectady, NY there are days the Senior Systems Engineer is expected to be in the office for company meetings.
Position Purpose: The Senior Systems Engineer ensures the stability and performance of Transfinder’s core Windows- and IIS-based application environments. This role focuses on system reliability, patching, troubleshooting, and rapid incident response, while actively contributing to the company’s transition to Linux and containerized platforms.
Collaborating closely with Senior Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), Development, and Operations teams, the Senior Systems Engineer brings deep expertise in legacy systems and hands-on experience with modern infrastructure.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- System Administration & Maintenance: Manages Windows Server, IIS, and SQL Server environments; performs patching, updates, and tuning to ensure uptime. Monitors systems using tools such as Nagios, Event Viewer, and PerfMon; proactively detects and resolves performance bottlenecks. Troubleshoots and optimizes IIS application pools, Windows services, networking settings, and system resources.
- Incident Response and Troubleshooting: Acts as a first responder for system-level outages, leading root cause analysis and rapid recovery efforts. Collaborates with Senior SREs to reduce recurring issues and support long-term automation/migration goals.
- Linux & Containerization: Leads migration efforts, including re-platforming or containerizing legacy applications. Supports the transition of workloads from Windows/IIS to Linux/Kubernetes environments.
- Documentation and Knowledge Sharing: Maintains playbooks, runbooks, and system level documentation for junior engineers. Contributes knowledge base articles and internal training materials.
- Migration Leadership: Provide expertise and guidance in migrating Windows workloads to Linux and container platforms, including re-platforming or containerizing legacy applications.
- Other duties and projects as assigned.
Required Skills/Abilities:
- Deep expertise in Windows Server administration and IIS.
- Strong knowledge of SQL Server performance monitoring and tuning.
- Proficiency with monitoring tools (Nagios, Event Viewer, PerfMon).
- Solid understanding of networking, load balancing, and Windows security.
- Proficiency in Linux administration and container platforms (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Scripting ability with PowerShell; familiarity with Bash preferred.
- Experience with AWS services (EC2, Systems Manager, Route53, IAM).
- Excellent troubleshooting and incident resolution skills in high-pressure environments.
- Strong communication and collaboration abilities.
- Experience mentoring or supporting junior engineers.
Experience:
- Minimum 5 years in a senior systems analyst, systems engineer, Windows engineer, or equivalent role.
- Hands-on experience supporting 24x7 production environments.
- Proven experience with Linux and container platforms.
- Demonstrated success migrating workloads from Windows/IIS to Linux and/or containers.
- Extensive troubleshooting experience with Windows/IIS and SQL Server environments.
Physical Requirements:
- Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
- Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times.
Annual Salary Range: $100,000.00-$145,000.00
Compensation: Salary is established based on various factors, including, but not limited to, prior employment history, job-related knowledge, education and training, skills, and geographic location.
Salary : $100,000 - $145,000